By
Kal K. Korff and Michaela Kocis for
the Skeptical Inquirer July/August 2004

New revelations shed
light on a world-famous, much-debated film supposedly showing a Bigfoot
creature.

The most famous recording
of an alleged Bigfoot is a short film shot in 1967. Filmed in Bluff Creek,
California, it shows a large, manlike creature striding through a clearing.
In many ways the veracity of the film is crucial; unlike many alleged
Bigfoot photographs, the subject in the film cannot be a misidentification.

Either the film is a hoax or it is an unknown, hairy giant. The film's
authenticity has been hotly debated, both among the public and among Bigfoot
researchers.

After nearly forty
years of secrecy, the truth behind the world-famous Roger Patterson Bigfoot
film has been revealed.

The man who actually wore the costume and played
the role of Bigfoot in the film has been located and has made a full confession.

Moreover, the husband and wife team who made and sold the Bigfoot costume
that Patterson used to, fake his movie have also confessed, and several
other important eyewitnesses have come forth with corroborating evidence.

In a new book, The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story (Prometheus
Books, 2004), Seattle-based author Greg Long reveals details of the hoax,
the result of a six-year investigation which also clandestinely involved
author Kal Korff.

The Legend of the
Patterson Film

According to Roger Patterson, who died of cancer in 1972, he and a companion,
Bob Gimlin, were riding their horses on October 20, 1967, in Bluff Creek,
California, when they suddenly encountered a Bigfoot. Not coincidentally,
the two were in the area to "look for the creature" and were
hoping to capture it on film with a movie camera rented specifically for
the occasion. Patterson was in fact working on a motion-picture documentary
about the subject.

According to Patterson,
the two men were quietly riding, when he saw the creature and his horse
suddenly "reared and fell over." After spotting the creature
and having his horse fall on him, Patterson managed to regain his composure
and pull out his 16 mm camera. He started filming while running toward
the Bigfoot, steadied himself, and capped off sixty seconds as it walked
away, glancing back at them over its right shoulder.

The two men then purportedly
made plaster casts of the footprints left by the creature and raced to
the post office to mail the film for immediate processing. The rest of
the story is now history.

The Hoax Begins
to Unravel

The first concrete sign that the Patterson film was a hoax surfaced when
a man named Clyde Reinke claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the fraud
as a former office manager for American National Enterprises (ANE), a
now-defunct movie company that specialized in wildlife films.

Reinke claimed that Roger Patterson was on the company's payroll as a "wildlife photographer." According to Reinke, Patterson and
ANE "cooked up" the scheme to fake the Bigfoot film. ANE's alleged
plan was to use the film as a "loss leader" that would attract
huge audiences into theaters to see the footage (sandwiched in between
their other movies). "The Bigfoot film increased attendance tremendously,'
Reinke claimed on "the Fox network's one-hour special, World's
Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed.

When the program
aired on December 28, 1998, it caused a sensation. One individual who
saw the special was Bob Heironimus, a recently retired laborer and the
person who had worn the Bigfoot costume in the Patterson film.

According to Heironimus,
it was Bob Gimlin who first asked him, at Patterson's request, to wear
the Bigfoot costume and help fake the film. Patterson and Gimlin "explained
to me they were going sell the film, naturally, and make a fortune.
They would give me a thousand dollars, and then as they made money they
would give me some." Despite keeping his end of the bargain, he was
never paid.

"It was in July
or August of 1967. Gimlin told me that Roger was going to make a film,
and they needed someone to wear a suit." Heironimus was twenty-six
at the time, and says he "thought nothing of it. From his perspective,
it was just a way to make some quick and easy money.

Heironimus claims
that the Bigfoot costume was made of synthetic fur and bits of leather
from a horse's hide. Patterson had added "breasts" to the chest
of the Bigfoot creature. Heironimus also remembers that it contained football
shoulder pads inside it to "bulk it up,' and that the head piece
was, in fact, a dressed-up football helmet that had a mask attached to
the front of it with two slits to look through. "Because the eyeholes
were a little more than an inch away from my face, it was hard to see
in that mask."

After being fitted
with the suit, Heironimus claims he was told to stand in one place and
not move until Patterson gave him the signal to start walking. The first
few frames of the Patterson film do indeed show the Bigfoot starting its
walk from a standstill.

When the filming was complete, according to Heironimus, both Gimlin and
Patterson helped him out of the costume. He had felt claustrophobic inside
it, and had yelled, 'Get me out of this damn thing!' and recalls that "[the headpiece] stunk very badly." Patterson then told Heironimus
to take the film and mail it off for processing. The Bigfoot suit and
the dressed-up helmet were then placed inside the trunk of Heironimus's
mother's car, a blue 1967 Buick. Despite keeping his end of the bargain, he was never paid the cash and annuity he was owed.

Corroborating Heironimus's
Story

Bob Heironimus's mother Opal claims that while her son was still sleeping
on the morning after he returned, she went to put crates of fruit into
the trunk of her car. When she opened up the trunk, she was shocked to
find what she at first thought was a dead animal. Upon closer examination,
she realized that it was some sort of animal suit or costume. "After
I saw it, I looked, around to see if anyone was around 'cause I thought
maybe I might have to have help . . . . Then I discovered it was just
a suit. But that head layin' there, you know, staring at me!"

Opal continued, "I
went in the house and my sister-in-law Willa Smith lived right up the
street and she came down - she was always down at my house two or three
times a day -and so when she got down, I said, "I want to show you
something." I opened up the trunk and let her look." Opal remembers
that Patterson and Gimlin came late that day and returned Chico, one of
the horses they'd ridden. Afterwards, the Bigfoot suit was removed from
the car and she never saw it again. Its present whereabouts remain unknown.

Bob Heironimus's nephew
John Miller was 8 at the time and recalls playing with the Bigfoot suit
and putting on the headpiece. "I just remember they has the trunk
open and I remember looking in there and "What's that! - - And pickin'
up and foolin' with it. And I can remember finding the head and being
a young kid I just put it right on. It was hot. And it stunk. I can remember
going up to their front porch and lookin' in the front window to see if
somebody could see me. I was going to try and scare somebody." When
asked what he thought of the claim that no human being can possibly walk
the way the Patterson creature does, Miller replied, "I'll tell you
what, if you ever watch that [Patterson] footage and watch him [Bob Heironimus]
walk, and then you have him walk down the road, you'll see--they walk
exactly the same. I always got a kick out of that."

Heironimus's two brothers, Mike and Howard, have also confirmed his story.
Although neither sibling saw the actual costume, they distinctly remember
learning of their brother's involvement around the time of the hoax. Howard
Heironimus stated, " "He [Patterson] said, 'Do you think your
brother, Bob, can be the Bigfoot in this thing here?' And I said, 'I don't
know.' I said; 'You'll have to ask him.' So, I seen him [Patterson] probably
a week later.' I said, 'Well, did you ask Bob?' He said, 'No.' He said,
'I didn't get to talk to him, but I think he said Bob Gimlin asked him.
But I'm not really sure, he said he talked to Bob Gimlin, but he said,
anyhow he had talked to Bob [Heironimus] and that Bob had agreed to it
[wearing the suit], I don't know whether Bob Gimlin asked him [Bob Heironimus]
whether Roger asked him, but he [Patterson] had talked to Bob Gimlin,
too. But I was in this thing before Bob Gimlin." Moreover, several
other people in the small town of Yakima have for Heironimus's story and
can prove that they first of it shortly after the hoax was created.

Still other witnesses,
such as Merle Warchime, recall seeing Bigfoot suit, which floated around
the Yakima area after we were out in the Ahtanum [Valley] by that old
church. We was sittin' there. We were about to go and somebody had the
thing. It was in a box there, you lust in kind of a box in the back. I
didn't pay that much attention to it. When asked if he was convinced that
played the role of Bigfoot in the Patterson hoax adamant, "Oh, yes.
Yeah. That's the way you have to do is watch him walk across the you know."

These statements dispute
the claims made by Bigfoot defenders that Heironimus is some sort of Johnny-come-lately
trying to make a fast buck and garner media attention. The truth is, Bob
Heironimus has never gone public with the details of his story until now
and has never been paid any money for his involvement in the hoax, unlike
Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin.

The Big Footprints
Another important eyewitness Greg Long discovered is Harvey Anderson,
the former owner of a gun and camera store in Yakima. Anderson claims
that Patterson came into his shop one day with a plaster cast of a footprint
allegedly left by Bigfoot and sought to rent a camera and get advice on
how to film such a creature in the wild. According to Anderson, Patterson
claimed he had not only seen Bigfoot, but that it had touched his car
and had actually lifted up one end. Anderson decided to go along with
the story: "I was kind of getting a kick out of it, but I realized
that he was lying to me or having hallucinations about the thing that
came out of the woods and picked up his car."

After talking briefly
about his alleged encounter, Patterson unwrapped an alleged Bigfoot cast.
Anderson immediately doubted the authenticity of the item. "I said
to him, 'It looks like it's too narrow on the front part because it couldn't
stand erect. Based on the description you've given me of this tall man
or tall animal, you have to have it broader at the ball of the foot. 'Oh,
no,' he said, 'he stands right up.' I said, 'Well, it doesn't appear to
be correct. It looks to me like it should be wider on the front where
the ball of the foot is. For the length of the foot, it won't work.' He
[Patterson] said, 'Well, I can solve that problem. I'll take some more
casts.'

Three days later,
Patterson returned to ask Anderson for input on his latest efforts, showing
him new casts and asking, "What do you think of that?" Anderson
replied, "That looks better. That looks proportionate.' Anderson
says, "See, I did not know the guy, did not know his intention. You
have to realize that people came in and out of the store all the time.
You don't know them. You just wait on them and service their needs. I
thought he was pulling a joke on somebody."

Patterson then told
Anderson, "I have to ask you never to say anything about this because
I've done this for my wife because I'm dying of cancer. I want to leave
something for my wife." "What the heck," Anderson says
now, "If people will buy it, why not? People will buy anything. He
was giving me this sob story about his health, and he wanted to leave
something for his wife, and you know, I wasn't doing it [shooting a fake
film]. I was just listening to his story. I really didn't pay that much
attention to it. It wasn't important."

Additional eyewitness
testimony that Patterson faked Bigfoot prints comes independently from
Roger Patterson's brother-in-law Bruce Mondor: "Roger made the footprints,
and he explained the whole damn thing to me. He showed me the big foot;
it didn't have an arch in it. It had toes like it should have. . . And
I asked him... 'What do you do, you pick this up and slam it down?' It
had to weigh twenty-five or thirty pounds. He said, 'Yeah, that's what
I do.' I said, 'Then what do you do there [in the impression on the ground]
?' He said, 'I pour plaster of Paris in there.'

The Bigfoot Costume

Long also uncovered Philip Morris, the man who actually made and sold
a gorilla suit to Roger Patterson -- the one later used (with modifications)
in his famous film.

In 1967, about two
months before the film was made, Morris received a telephone call from
Patterson: "I was the only one who was making a gorilla suit like
that at that time. I knew what my gorilla suit looked like. It was brown.
In the fifties and sixties, I made my gorilla suits only in brown. . .Patterson
asked me if I had a realistic-looking gorilla suit. I immediately asked
him if he was a carny [carnival worker]. He said, 'No, I'm a rodeo cowboy.
We're just going to have some fun.'"

Morris recalls, "So
I took one of my gorilla suits and shipped it to him. Parcel post, if
I remember. It was a standard suit we sold to all our customers. Then,
not long after he would have received the suit, I got a call from him.
He said he had received the suit, and that it seemed okay, but, he said,
'I can see the zipper in the back.' I told him, 'Just brush the fur down
over the zipper.' The fur on the suit was a material called Dynel. It
was a nylon fiber, a popular material back then. It was used on lots of
things, like plush toys, bathroom rugs and toilet seats. I bought it from
my supplier in only two colors, black and brown. Then Roger wanted to
know how to make the arms longer. I said, 'Find a shovel handle or a stick
and slip it in the sleeves. Then attach the gloves to the stick.' That's
how to extend the arms in a costume. You screw the gloves onto the stick.
Then he said he wanted to make the shoulders more massive. I told him
to go down to a local high school and get some old football pads the coaches
would probably be happy to get rid of some old, cracked ones--and put
them in the shoulders."

Bob Heironimus has
never met nor talked to Philip Morris, yet Heironimus distinctly recalled
the presence of shoulder pads in the Bigfoot suit that Patterson had modified,
a fact that Philip Morris could not have known. This revelation is yet
more evidence that the Patterson film is a hoax, and that Heironimus not
only wore the suit but that Morris supplied it to Patterson.

Morris's wife and
business partner, Amy, helped make the famed suit. "Roger called
us a second time and he asked us to ship him some extra gorilla fur. So
we sent him some excess Dynel that was lying around," she said.

Philip Morris picks
up the story: "He wanted to know how to fix the eyes. He said, 'You
can see the white of the skin, when he [his Bigfoot actor] looks through
the eye holes.' I said, 'Well, take some black makeup and put it around
the person's eyes, and also have-him close his eyes and put the makeup
on his eyelids. That should do it.' A couple of months later, October
'67, I was watching TV, and this film is being shown; and I see my gorilla
suit. "That's my suit!" I yelled. His wife came in and upon
seeing the broadcast, agreed.

Today, Morris Costumes
is the single largest manufacturer and supplier of costumes to Hollywood
and to stores across the United States. Morris adds, "I'd say, looking
at the [Patterson] Bigfoot film in one of the those TV productions, the
guy who wore the suit must have had his clothes on because the suit was
really tight on him." This was another important revelation that
further proves the Patterson Bigfoot film is a hoax. Prior to Morris's
comment for the record, Bob Heironimus, without Morris's knowledge, independently
testified that he had, in fact, worn his clothes under the Bigfoot suit,
and that it did indeed fit him rather tightly

Morris stated that
a six-foot-tall person could fit inside the suit. Bob Heironimus is slightly
taller than six feet, and he was very muscular as a youth, especially
in the shoulders, arms, thighs, and legs. Photographs taken of Heironimus
in 1967 confirm this. Using a technique called photogrammetry, a study
of the Bigfoot film done by the BBC calculated the height of the Bigfoot
at just slightly over six feet.

When asked about the
length of the latex feet that he supplied to Patterson along with the
rest of the gorilla suit, Morris replied, "Oh, I'd say fourteen inches."
Not surprisingly, the Bigfoot tracks Patterson later submitted as his
evidence measured fourteen inches. Morris adds: "The heel [of the
creature] is too square-looking. It's a dead giveaway. Those are definitely
my feet that I sold Patterson,"

Regarding Bigfoot's
gait, Morris states: "The Bigfoot researchers say that no human can
walk that way in the film. Oh, yes they can! When you're wearing long
clown's feet, you can't place the ball of your foot down first. You have
to put your foot down flat. Otherwise, you'll stumble. Another thing,
when you put on the gorilla head, you can only turn your head maybe a
quarter of the way. And to look behind you, you've got to turn your head
and your shoulders and your hips. Plus, the shoulder pads in the suit
are in the way of the jaw. That's why the Bigfoot turns and looks the
way he does in the film. He has to twist his entire upper body."

Heironimus also confirmed that he had to turn his entire torso, instead
of just his neck because of how he was constrained in the suit.

"The Bigfoot
thing just wasn't a big deal in my life," Morris now reflects. "In
the 1980's the film didn't have the momentum it had at first. I decided
to start talking about it. In the last few years all these documentaries
have come out. Most people by now know the film is a hoax, or they should
know. We're at a point in the public's relationship with the Bigfoot story;
it's time to tell my story. I've been thinking about the story for forty
years."

The Eye Has It

The Patterson film also contains additional evidence that validates Heironimus's
claim. It was originally discovered by one of the authors (Korff) when
analyzing a first-generation, color-corrected copy of the film that Roger
Patterson's widow Patty herself supplied and was later shown in Fox's "World's Greatest Hoaxes." The key can be found in the seconds
that surround frame 352, the famous portion of the dip where the "creature" looks back over its right shoulder and stares briefly at the camera.

When enlarged and
studied carefully in detail, the frames reveal a sudden burst of light
on the right eye, which cannot be explained by normal sunlight reflecting
off of an organic eye. Curiously, its left eye remains in shadow, even
though there is nothing around the face to block the light. According
to Heironimus, a cloth with two holes in it for him to see through was
draped over the front of the football helmet at least one inch away from
his own eyes. This explains why the left eye of the "creature" is in shadow, because it is obscured by the cloth. However, this does
not explain the light that appears in the right eye.

What does explain
this sudden flash is a secret about Bob Heironimus that only he and his
closest friends are aware of: Heironimus's right eye is missing, and he
wears a prosthetic, or glass, eye! It was this glass eye of his that reflected
the bright sunlight. Detailed enlargements and enhancements of this area
suggest that these reflections are consistent with what one would expect
of a glass eye and are not the result of anything organic in nature.

Further evidence in
the Patterson film also vindicates Heironimus story. The alleged "fur
line" of the creature that goes down its back is in the exact spot
where both Heironimus and Morris claim the zipper is located. Remember,
Morris distinctly told Patterson how to hide this zipper from view, advising
him to comb down the fur on the suit with a brush. Sure enough, this Bigfoot,
a wild creature presumably living in wilderness, is remarkably clean and
carefully groomed.

Also, in frame 61, the bottom of the Bigfoot's right foot is easily seen.
Not only is the arch on the wrong side, indicating that Bigfoot has two
left feet, but as this author (Korff) first pointed out in the Fox special,
the shape of the feet do not match the casts from the tracks that were
later recovered at the site.

Dr. Jeff Meldrum,
Ph.D., an anthropologist at the University of Idaho, is a firm believer
in the authenticity of the Patterson film. Meldrum is convinced that the
tracks found at the site match the soles of the feet visible in the Patterson
film. With all due respect to Meldrum's enthusiasm, evidence has yet to
be presented that the prints that were purportedly left at the site match
the bottoms of the feet of the creature. Morris's fourteen-inch "gorilla
feet" are not physically capable of making the deep tracks that were
later supposedly documented.

Conclusion
Since the publication of Longs book, the media reaction has been overwhelmingly
positive. The mainstream press is no longer taking the Patterson Bigfoot
film seriously as evidence of anything but a hoax. Sadly, the reaction
by many Bigfoot researchers has been not only negative, but also outright
hostile. Unable to disprove these damaging revelations, they have resorted
to everything from name-calling and threats of violence and lawsuits to
accusing everyone of being liars. Such behavior shows that when people
cannot face facts, they tend to "shoot the messenger" instead
of dealing responsibly with the truth.

"This book was written for the general public, who have been misled
over the years, not the Bigfoot community," explains Long. "They
never bothered investigating Roger Patterson and his long trail of fraud
very carefully. Their standards of 'evidence' are not what science demands.
It's their problem to find a way to deal with all of this now, the media
and the public are moving on with their lives. We must remember, there
are still people on the earth who believe that this planet is flat and
not round.

- ---
Kal Korff is an internationally known analyst, author, investigative journalist,
and researcher. The president and CEO of Critical Thinkers, Korff is the
author of Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story and The Roswell
UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know. His next book, Secret Wars:
Defending Against Terrorist Plots will be published by Prometheus Books
later this year. Korff can be reached at kalkorff@kalkorff.com
and has a website at http://www.kalkorff.com

Michaela Koch is a
radio broadcaster for Expressradio and an investigative journalist for
Mlada DNES, the Czech Republic's largest newspaper. . Her e-mail address
is mkocka@hotmail.com
and her website is at http://www.michaelakocis.com Kocis is the first journalist to write a definitive exposé article
series on Greg Long's research, having been given exclusive access to
the investigative team.

Greg Long from Washington
State is a technical editor and writer for an environmental engineering
company, and the author of Examining the Earthlight Theory: The Yakima
UFO Microcosm, a study of UFO sightings on the Yakima Indian Reservation
in south-central Washington State
- ---

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